Satisfying Saturday

It's going to be a full day of cooking, and (hopefully) some sewing today. Before I get into all of that, however, take a look at this finished quilt top.

Before looking at the borders, I removed all the freezer paper from the quilt back, and then squared it up. After that, I called in the Resident Engineer, whose part-time job assignment is to act as Design Consultant. He's a handy man to have around, for so many reasons. He helped me decide on the placement of the border. We placed it at all four corners, and this was the best configuration.

It seemed to finish off the right side better since the poppy fabric border is narrow there. Also, I laid the striped binding fabric across the top to see how it would look. The striped fabric is some I purchased while we were traveling, thinking it would be a good binding for this quilt.

Satisfied with the border placement, I sewed it on, and my quilt top was finished. It still needs quilting and binding, of course.

Keeping in mind this is my first attempt at this technique without the guidance of an instructor, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Some bold choices were made, and I learned a lot doing one on my own. As I was piecing it together, I wondered why I'd drawn certain lines, and realized in retrospect that some of them probably were unnecessary.

Last night I was remembering when I drew the pattern for the Snips and Snails quilt. There were a lot of lines drawn on the bib for the overalls, and it was kind of a big mess by the time I was finished with it. Ann Shaw helped me clean it up a little.

There were places in the scrub jay where a seam was sewn on a piece that could just as easily have been left whole. Sometimes the seam is helpful for definition, as it was for the hands and fingers of the boy. Sometimes it makes no difference at all to the final quilt, except to make the pieces frustratingly tiny. In any case, this is how learning happens, and the scrub jay taught me quite a lot.

It's very tempting to go ahead with sandwiching and quilting it before we leave on our trip this fall. I already have a stack of quilt sandwiches for quilting, however, and so I'm not sure where to start with those. Whatever isn't finished before we leave is going to sit until we arrive home next spring. What to quilt and when is irrelevant right now, however, because Saturday is going to be a cooking day...as is Sunday...and Monday. We're expecting dinner guests tomorrow, and so I'm getting a head start by making a Dill Potato Salad today. It's our favorite potato salad ever.

You can find the recipe right here. Also, I'm baking some muffins that happen to be on our diet breakfast for tomorrow...speaking of which...I've lost ten pounds as of today. Yay! Finally, I'm making the little Lemon Cheesecake Mousse desserts (definitely not on our diet) for our dinner tomorrow. They're small and light, and there will be no leftovers. You can find that recipe right here. Finally, I'm making kohlrabi fritters for our lunch today. We got two nice kohlrabi heads in last week's CSA. The fritters are a low-calorie option for them, and surprisingly good. They've given me a much higher opinion of kohlrabi.

They have a nice light lemon dill topping, and they'll make a tasty and low-calorie lunch for us. You can find that recipe right here.

So you can see I have my work cut out for me in the kitchen today. There is more to do tomorrow, but doing it ahead will free me up to enjoy our guests when they arrive. If there's time, I'll be back to catching up (again) on my sewing this afternoon. Oh yes...it's time to set a goal for July's OMG.

My goal for July is to quilt and bind the Wheel Estate Quilt.

And, frankly, I'm hoping to get more quilts quilted during July, but Wheel Estate is a good place to start.